The Rocky Roaders Strike Once More
The Rocky Roaders Strike Once More
Howdy, partner. This is the Righteous Outlaw. Apart from Gentleman 13, there hasn’t really been any sort of crime plaguing our town. Y’all could say our glory days are over, because they were all during a period when the Dawggerson gang was still at large, and Dead-Eye Dennis was still a gangster after that. Of course, there are outlaws and criminals still on the loose, and they are a gang of otters known as the “Rocky Roaders.” What crimes, you may ask? Oh, the usual: bank robberies, saloon hold-ups, train robberies, and stagecoach hold-ups. Folks still walk and ride horseback in our town, and use stagecoaches. So where do y’all who drive those cars go? Don’t worry. There’s places to park, and there’s back roads that go around us. (Hicksburg, Texas, and the district of Wildcat City known as Horseshoeville do this same thing.)
Yup. We still fit the stereotype on the outside of our town even if we have the modern things Nickelback Nathan won’t care about occurring on the insides of homes and buildings, but that doesn’t make him an exact drone of Leo the Patriotic Lion. That cowboy known as “Callahan Cody” would be a better example because of his pistol-drawing habits. (Nathan doesn’t carry one of those; he prefers to use a lariat.) Of course, that new friend of ours who calls himself Zax had made a deal with Cody to cut back on the drawing of those two pistols so that Cody won’t go to jail and lower himself to the standards of evil. Cody has ran that risk before, don’t get me wrong, because he’s literally the fastest gun in the modern Wild West. If somebody were to die with him in a gunfight, he’d get the crook first every time.
The Rocky Roaders have every reason to be sued for plagiarism by the Glaswegian Devils now that the Devils quit being evil forces themselves after 307 years of nothing. This is because they number their gangsters and use an “L” to signify their leader. “Mr. L,” we call him. Truth be told, they can also be comparable to the Devils in the fact that they have done organized crime for a long time before they came here to Glenn View Springs, but have no idea why they’re criminals or how they got started. (It reminded Leo the Patriotic Lion of a clan feud he once settled, because the two families had been at it for so long but forgot why; they just taught their families to hate the other family as a rule. “Nobody took a hit in all that time,” he told me one day when he was here, but it wasn’t the day he got shot in the head. “In the end, I got them to prove them were all a bunch of cowards, because most people in that regard are. Now that is not stereotyping hillbillies; that was only true of that one case. But those people are, creepy enough, the most likely ones to shoot at somebody like me, because even if it was the President, they’d shoo him off with shots, since they won’t take kindly to any trespassers.”)
Today, the gang decided it was time for another series of bank robberies, but it wasn’t our banks being robbed. It was other banks from other towns, and the police of those towns were having troubles catching them, proving that in some cases, our horses can outrun even the most sophisticated police cars. “Better let the Sheriff of Glenn View Springs know,” one officer reported to his higher-ups. “That town has those cowboys that can stop anything.”
“You mean the Nickelbacks and the tiger in black with a mask?” the commissioner replied. “You bet I will! Those cowboys are the greatest thing that has ever happened to Arizona ever since it became the 48th state.” He looked up the Sheriff’s number in the phone book and made the call, and in turn, the Sheriff called me and the Nickelbacks for extra help if necessary, since the Rocky Roaders were headed back to our town, although they were going to their hideout. The police of the other towns were chasing them still, since they promised the banks they would have their money back. Yet, fear of Leo kicked in, and they said to themselves, “He always fought for the lifestyle of yesteryear. You don’t think he meant this, do you?”
“No, I think he wanted America to always be in the postwar years of the 1940s but without all the racism and the problems,” another officer replied. “America had a bigger moral standard that she lived up to then than she does now but doesn’t live up to, or so he said. He’s out of that phase, I must let you know, but he’s still got the huge voice. It’s no wonder the world spies on him or wants him dead. That last one’s not going to happen.” (Unbeknownst to anybody but that Zanta critter at the time, this jaguar serving on the force was one of his darkness eternals.)
Almost immediately after the Sheriff called for me, I was there, riding like the wind, on my trusty horse. Good thing my horse has been trained to stop on a dime, or I’d probably fall off every time trying to get him to do so. It would be a funny running gag for one of those cartoons, but there’s nothing funny in real life about getting hurt, so why do y’all laugh at stuff like that? Anyway, I wasted no time entering his office. “I got here as soon as I could, Sheriff,” I said. “What’s the trouble?”
“The Rocky Roaders are back in town,” he replied. “I think they’re heading for their hideout, but the police from other towns are hot on their trail. They just think the Roaders outran them, so they called on me to help, and you I turn to first. I hope the Nickelbacks are coming, too.”
“I got a feeling they’re on their way to the hideout. That’s Nathan’s way of doing things.”
“I see. Anyways, I’ll follow you there, provided you know where it is.”
“I do know where it is; Randy Travesa once used it as his hideout.”
“Okay; that makes it easier.” The Sheriff saddled up alongside me and followed me to the hideout. To confirm it was once his, Travesa joined us as well. “I’m so grateful I gave up the crime biz,” he said, “because it was doing nothing but giving me grief and a migraine. That reminds me; I have to buy some more Excedrin according to my prescription the doctor wrote me. Lucky the drugstore’s now open.” (The drugstore we have in town moved into a better location across the street so that a new barber could open up a shop. Business was booming for him ever since.)
“Oh, yes; I think that’s a better location for it.”
Eventually we came across Travesa’s old hideout, and he confirmed it was once his. “It’s always been that ugly shade of bright green; I think chartreuse is the correct term for it,” he said. “It’s loud, to say the least. I since moved into a new house that may look ugly still, but at least it’s a house.”
“Why would your new home look ugly?” I asked.
“It has one of those weird 1970s designs to it.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll remember that. Anyway, here comes the backup.” The Nickelbacks arrived by this point, only to discover the Rocky Roaders weren’t here yet. “Well, what do y’all know? I’ll be dogged!” Nathan exclaimed. “We’s up and beaten them to it!”
“Yup,” said David. “The criminals are quick but we are quicker. Does this mean we’ll have to do an ambush?”
“I think that’s our best bet,” the Sheriff replied. “The problem is that they have an alarm system installed; it will detect intruders. But since this town has the old-fashioned methods triumphing over the modern ones, it won’t be an issue.”
We managed to sneak inside the hideout, and even though the alarm system had gone off, the Rocky Roaders did not get a notification of it, because they didn’t have the special communicators that some of us had when T2 sold them to us, and Nathan reluctantly accepted it in spite of his reputation for never using anything modern. As a result, it gave us ample time to disarm the darn thing, and it took us all the way until they arrived to do so, so while we had only a split second to hide or otherwise surprise them, they had no idea that there were intruders until they arrived. They also didn’t know that Leo the Patriotic Lion wasn’t dead. This is why Mr. L. exclaimed, “You! Intruders! You shall pay for this, but also because your friend is dead and you let him die!”
“No thanks to you, he’s not,” I growled as the fighting began, “and you should know you just told a big fat lie. He lives to fight another day.”
“Rubbish! I don’t believe it!”
“Oh, you’ll believe it when you come across him one day.” (NOTE: this wasn’t using Leo as a threat as he determined it later on; this was just throwing them for a loop.)
“You’ll have to eat lead first!”
“We’ll just see about that!”
It seemed we were doing a lot of shooting and getting nowhere fast, because, like any stereotypical gun battle in the West, nobody took a hit in spite of all the shooting. Travesa hated guns and easily got scared by them, so Nathan took to being his bodyguard. “It’s just like I remember it,” he said, “but I don’t mind you trashing the place. It’s a place I’d rather forget and wish I never had it.”
“Don’t you worry none ’bout nothin’, now,” Nathan replied. “I ain’t gonna let them outlaws take y’all’s hind hostage now!” He said it with confidence as he twirled his lariat furiously and managed to rope up the leader. The Sheriff and I roped up a few others, while David, using his superhuman strength, managed to tear apart the alarm system, revealing that there was more money hiding behind it. “I think I hit the jackpot!” he announced. “Only it won’t be mine.”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s going back where it belongs.”
By now all those sirens were wailing, and the police, naturally, were shouting, “WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! NO MONKEY BUSINESS NOW; WE HAVE YOU COVERED!”
“There’s no more need for guns, gentleman,” I called as we escorted the gangsters outside, also showing all the moneybags they claimed for themselves in the process of robbing the banks. “There is no more fight left in them.”
“Saints be praised!” said one officer. “They did it!”
“I knew we could count on them and their lifestyle to help us out,” said another. “Sometimes simple really does beat complicated. At least it did here. It may not always do so.” The police took over custody of the Roaders and hauled them off to a jail in a different town. We had to stop and catch our breaths before riding back to town, although because those modern machines were present on the outskirts of town so that modern business could work with the traditional, a bulldozing crew with a wrecking ball got to work on demoing the hideout.
“Good riddance to a bad memory,” Travesa commented when he saw the demolition. “A bad memory that will last a lifetime, but no longer will I physically see it. And I’m grateful I wasn’t here to see Leo take a hit; I think I would’ve cried over it for days to come.”
“You aren’t at risk for PTSD, are you?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m going to see the doctor for,” he replied. “Guns scare me, and while I had a brief status as an outlaw myself, I never wanted to hurt anybody.”
“Well, that makes y’all the first of them outlaws I ever met that had one of them moral codes goin’ for y’all’s worth,” Nathan commented. “Most of them ain’t got no morals. They ain’t gonna exercise restraint against y’all neither.”
“I’ll remember that.” Travesa took his hat off to fan himself from the heat of the town as we rode on back, although we stopped by Miss Jamie’s Tumbleweed Saloon for a bite to eat and a nice ice-cold sarsaparilla. And I’m happy to report the good news that Travesa wasn’t at risk at all for PTSD. He just had a fear of guns and gunfire that he needed to conquer, and he was ever grateful he had us to help him do that.
THE END
Eterna, its beings, and Gentleman 13 (C)
Zanta Keplicus and used with permission
Zax and UN1024s (C)
Chuong and used with permission
Howdy, partner. This is the Righteous Outlaw. Apart from Gentleman 13, there hasn’t really been any sort of crime plaguing our town. Y’all could say our glory days are over, because they were all during a period when the Dawggerson gang was still at large, and Dead-Eye Dennis was still a gangster after that. Of course, there are outlaws and criminals still on the loose, and they are a gang of otters known as the “Rocky Roaders.” What crimes, you may ask? Oh, the usual: bank robberies, saloon hold-ups, train robberies, and stagecoach hold-ups. Folks still walk and ride horseback in our town, and use stagecoaches. So where do y’all who drive those cars go? Don’t worry. There’s places to park, and there’s back roads that go around us. (Hicksburg, Texas, and the district of Wildcat City known as Horseshoeville do this same thing.)
Yup. We still fit the stereotype on the outside of our town even if we have the modern things Nickelback Nathan won’t care about occurring on the insides of homes and buildings, but that doesn’t make him an exact drone of Leo the Patriotic Lion. That cowboy known as “Callahan Cody” would be a better example because of his pistol-drawing habits. (Nathan doesn’t carry one of those; he prefers to use a lariat.) Of course, that new friend of ours who calls himself Zax had made a deal with Cody to cut back on the drawing of those two pistols so that Cody won’t go to jail and lower himself to the standards of evil. Cody has ran that risk before, don’t get me wrong, because he’s literally the fastest gun in the modern Wild West. If somebody were to die with him in a gunfight, he’d get the crook first every time.
The Rocky Roaders have every reason to be sued for plagiarism by the Glaswegian Devils now that the Devils quit being evil forces themselves after 307 years of nothing. This is because they number their gangsters and use an “L” to signify their leader. “Mr. L,” we call him. Truth be told, they can also be comparable to the Devils in the fact that they have done organized crime for a long time before they came here to Glenn View Springs, but have no idea why they’re criminals or how they got started. (It reminded Leo the Patriotic Lion of a clan feud he once settled, because the two families had been at it for so long but forgot why; they just taught their families to hate the other family as a rule. “Nobody took a hit in all that time,” he told me one day when he was here, but it wasn’t the day he got shot in the head. “In the end, I got them to prove them were all a bunch of cowards, because most people in that regard are. Now that is not stereotyping hillbillies; that was only true of that one case. But those people are, creepy enough, the most likely ones to shoot at somebody like me, because even if it was the President, they’d shoo him off with shots, since they won’t take kindly to any trespassers.”)
Today, the gang decided it was time for another series of bank robberies, but it wasn’t our banks being robbed. It was other banks from other towns, and the police of those towns were having troubles catching them, proving that in some cases, our horses can outrun even the most sophisticated police cars. “Better let the Sheriff of Glenn View Springs know,” one officer reported to his higher-ups. “That town has those cowboys that can stop anything.”
“You mean the Nickelbacks and the tiger in black with a mask?” the commissioner replied. “You bet I will! Those cowboys are the greatest thing that has ever happened to Arizona ever since it became the 48th state.” He looked up the Sheriff’s number in the phone book and made the call, and in turn, the Sheriff called me and the Nickelbacks for extra help if necessary, since the Rocky Roaders were headed back to our town, although they were going to their hideout. The police of the other towns were chasing them still, since they promised the banks they would have their money back. Yet, fear of Leo kicked in, and they said to themselves, “He always fought for the lifestyle of yesteryear. You don’t think he meant this, do you?”
“No, I think he wanted America to always be in the postwar years of the 1940s but without all the racism and the problems,” another officer replied. “America had a bigger moral standard that she lived up to then than she does now but doesn’t live up to, or so he said. He’s out of that phase, I must let you know, but he’s still got the huge voice. It’s no wonder the world spies on him or wants him dead. That last one’s not going to happen.” (Unbeknownst to anybody but that Zanta critter at the time, this jaguar serving on the force was one of his darkness eternals.)
Almost immediately after the Sheriff called for me, I was there, riding like the wind, on my trusty horse. Good thing my horse has been trained to stop on a dime, or I’d probably fall off every time trying to get him to do so. It would be a funny running gag for one of those cartoons, but there’s nothing funny in real life about getting hurt, so why do y’all laugh at stuff like that? Anyway, I wasted no time entering his office. “I got here as soon as I could, Sheriff,” I said. “What’s the trouble?”
“The Rocky Roaders are back in town,” he replied. “I think they’re heading for their hideout, but the police from other towns are hot on their trail. They just think the Roaders outran them, so they called on me to help, and you I turn to first. I hope the Nickelbacks are coming, too.”
“I got a feeling they’re on their way to the hideout. That’s Nathan’s way of doing things.”
“I see. Anyways, I’ll follow you there, provided you know where it is.”
“I do know where it is; Randy Travesa once used it as his hideout.”
“Okay; that makes it easier.” The Sheriff saddled up alongside me and followed me to the hideout. To confirm it was once his, Travesa joined us as well. “I’m so grateful I gave up the crime biz,” he said, “because it was doing nothing but giving me grief and a migraine. That reminds me; I have to buy some more Excedrin according to my prescription the doctor wrote me. Lucky the drugstore’s now open.” (The drugstore we have in town moved into a better location across the street so that a new barber could open up a shop. Business was booming for him ever since.)
“Oh, yes; I think that’s a better location for it.”
Eventually we came across Travesa’s old hideout, and he confirmed it was once his. “It’s always been that ugly shade of bright green; I think chartreuse is the correct term for it,” he said. “It’s loud, to say the least. I since moved into a new house that may look ugly still, but at least it’s a house.”
“Why would your new home look ugly?” I asked.
“It has one of those weird 1970s designs to it.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll remember that. Anyway, here comes the backup.” The Nickelbacks arrived by this point, only to discover the Rocky Roaders weren’t here yet. “Well, what do y’all know? I’ll be dogged!” Nathan exclaimed. “We’s up and beaten them to it!”
“Yup,” said David. “The criminals are quick but we are quicker. Does this mean we’ll have to do an ambush?”
“I think that’s our best bet,” the Sheriff replied. “The problem is that they have an alarm system installed; it will detect intruders. But since this town has the old-fashioned methods triumphing over the modern ones, it won’t be an issue.”
We managed to sneak inside the hideout, and even though the alarm system had gone off, the Rocky Roaders did not get a notification of it, because they didn’t have the special communicators that some of us had when T2 sold them to us, and Nathan reluctantly accepted it in spite of his reputation for never using anything modern. As a result, it gave us ample time to disarm the darn thing, and it took us all the way until they arrived to do so, so while we had only a split second to hide or otherwise surprise them, they had no idea that there were intruders until they arrived. They also didn’t know that Leo the Patriotic Lion wasn’t dead. This is why Mr. L. exclaimed, “You! Intruders! You shall pay for this, but also because your friend is dead and you let him die!”
“No thanks to you, he’s not,” I growled as the fighting began, “and you should know you just told a big fat lie. He lives to fight another day.”
“Rubbish! I don’t believe it!”
“Oh, you’ll believe it when you come across him one day.” (NOTE: this wasn’t using Leo as a threat as he determined it later on; this was just throwing them for a loop.)
“You’ll have to eat lead first!”
“We’ll just see about that!”
It seemed we were doing a lot of shooting and getting nowhere fast, because, like any stereotypical gun battle in the West, nobody took a hit in spite of all the shooting. Travesa hated guns and easily got scared by them, so Nathan took to being his bodyguard. “It’s just like I remember it,” he said, “but I don’t mind you trashing the place. It’s a place I’d rather forget and wish I never had it.”
“Don’t you worry none ’bout nothin’, now,” Nathan replied. “I ain’t gonna let them outlaws take y’all’s hind hostage now!” He said it with confidence as he twirled his lariat furiously and managed to rope up the leader. The Sheriff and I roped up a few others, while David, using his superhuman strength, managed to tear apart the alarm system, revealing that there was more money hiding behind it. “I think I hit the jackpot!” he announced. “Only it won’t be mine.”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s going back where it belongs.”
By now all those sirens were wailing, and the police, naturally, were shouting, “WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! NO MONKEY BUSINESS NOW; WE HAVE YOU COVERED!”
“There’s no more need for guns, gentleman,” I called as we escorted the gangsters outside, also showing all the moneybags they claimed for themselves in the process of robbing the banks. “There is no more fight left in them.”
“Saints be praised!” said one officer. “They did it!”
“I knew we could count on them and their lifestyle to help us out,” said another. “Sometimes simple really does beat complicated. At least it did here. It may not always do so.” The police took over custody of the Roaders and hauled them off to a jail in a different town. We had to stop and catch our breaths before riding back to town, although because those modern machines were present on the outskirts of town so that modern business could work with the traditional, a bulldozing crew with a wrecking ball got to work on demoing the hideout.
“Good riddance to a bad memory,” Travesa commented when he saw the demolition. “A bad memory that will last a lifetime, but no longer will I physically see it. And I’m grateful I wasn’t here to see Leo take a hit; I think I would’ve cried over it for days to come.”
“You aren’t at risk for PTSD, are you?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m going to see the doctor for,” he replied. “Guns scare me, and while I had a brief status as an outlaw myself, I never wanted to hurt anybody.”
“Well, that makes y’all the first of them outlaws I ever met that had one of them moral codes goin’ for y’all’s worth,” Nathan commented. “Most of them ain’t got no morals. They ain’t gonna exercise restraint against y’all neither.”
“I’ll remember that.” Travesa took his hat off to fan himself from the heat of the town as we rode on back, although we stopped by Miss Jamie’s Tumbleweed Saloon for a bite to eat and a nice ice-cold sarsaparilla. And I’m happy to report the good news that Travesa wasn’t at risk at all for PTSD. He just had a fear of guns and gunfire that he needed to conquer, and he was ever grateful he had us to help him do that.
THE END
Eterna, its beings, and Gentleman 13 (C)
Zanta Keplicus and used with permissionZax and UN1024s (C)
Chuong and used with permission
Category Story / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 51 kB
Listed in Folders
(Forgot to credit that Zax is mine because he's American UN1024.)
Chuong: So that's why Travesa doesn't speak to us UNs. Doesn't help that when we are in military armor, we carry guns and assault rifles usually. He's not going to like me if he sees me with a K11.
Cynthia: And I don't think he'll like my people either because we Swiss are commonly seen with SIG 552 assault rifles with us in civilian clothing as much as we're seen in military armor. Swiss men under law must keep their assault rifles and maintain them. To them, owning a gun is not just a right, it's also a sign of mandatory duty for one's country for defensive purposes as well as to help maintain neutrality.
Robert: He probably doesn't like Swiss people anyways because of that fact. If only he understands that it's the only way to keep your country safe and neutral. But he will hate the T3 (Transnistrian Troublesome Triad) the most since they are the world's most notorious illegal firearms dealer and manufacturer of them.
Zax: Chartreuse green... I was going to say Paris green but that references to rat poison that was used in Paris in the old days until Paris green was banned due to its damage to the environment. But I can turn Travesa's home into Victorian pale tan using a construction grade spraypaint instead of the old paint brush and paint can to get the job done faster and cleaner. Paint cans are messy and some use lead in paint.
Chuong: Thanks to new painting technology, lead paint is being banned a lot around the world. Vietnam is one of them.
James: Now that my country is developed and prosperous, Liberia has outlawed lead paint. Ever since Africa became developed and prosperous, many countries in Africa are enforcing strict environmental protection laws.
Malawa/Mason: Back in Malawi, we have arguably the toughest environmental laws in Africa. Our government treats lead paint like illegal drugs. If they see anyone with lead paint, they will confiscate them.
Chuong: So that's why Travesa doesn't speak to us UNs. Doesn't help that when we are in military armor, we carry guns and assault rifles usually. He's not going to like me if he sees me with a K11.
Cynthia: And I don't think he'll like my people either because we Swiss are commonly seen with SIG 552 assault rifles with us in civilian clothing as much as we're seen in military armor. Swiss men under law must keep their assault rifles and maintain them. To them, owning a gun is not just a right, it's also a sign of mandatory duty for one's country for defensive purposes as well as to help maintain neutrality.
Robert: He probably doesn't like Swiss people anyways because of that fact. If only he understands that it's the only way to keep your country safe and neutral. But he will hate the T3 (Transnistrian Troublesome Triad) the most since they are the world's most notorious illegal firearms dealer and manufacturer of them.
Zax: Chartreuse green... I was going to say Paris green but that references to rat poison that was used in Paris in the old days until Paris green was banned due to its damage to the environment. But I can turn Travesa's home into Victorian pale tan using a construction grade spraypaint instead of the old paint brush and paint can to get the job done faster and cleaner. Paint cans are messy and some use lead in paint.
Chuong: Thanks to new painting technology, lead paint is being banned a lot around the world. Vietnam is one of them.
James: Now that my country is developed and prosperous, Liberia has outlawed lead paint. Ever since Africa became developed and prosperous, many countries in Africa are enforcing strict environmental protection laws.
Malawa/Mason: Back in Malawi, we have arguably the toughest environmental laws in Africa. Our government treats lead paint like illegal drugs. If they see anyone with lead paint, they will confiscate them.
(A simple mistake; I never catch those things. Sorry.)
Nathan: I got a feeling it'll take all y'all's ammo y'all got on ya to help him conquer his fear, even though he's up and surrounded by gun-carryin' citizens all over town.
Outlaw: And that not just us and the Sheriff. "The Five" and the Coyote Rangers all are armed as well, and not just with a bugle.
Sgt. Jack Gronewolf: Being a mix of old and new, we still use the bugle calls from the 1800s.
Leo: Naturally.
Travesa: If your friend Zanta can conquer his fear of superheroes, I reckon I can conquer my fear of guns. And thank you for your offer, Zax, but you should know I live in a different house now that this hideout I once used is gone. It has a tacky yellow color and the paint was lead-based paint at first. I don't know if it had a paint job since then.
Nathan: I got a feeling it'll take all y'all's ammo y'all got on ya to help him conquer his fear, even though he's up and surrounded by gun-carryin' citizens all over town.
Outlaw: And that not just us and the Sheriff. "The Five" and the Coyote Rangers all are armed as well, and not just with a bugle.
Sgt. Jack Gronewolf: Being a mix of old and new, we still use the bugle calls from the 1800s.
Leo: Naturally.
Travesa: If your friend Zanta can conquer his fear of superheroes, I reckon I can conquer my fear of guns. And thank you for your offer, Zax, but you should know I live in a different house now that this hideout I once used is gone. It has a tacky yellow color and the paint was lead-based paint at first. I don't know if it had a paint job since then.
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